The present invention relates to revenue-generating and/or cost-incurring units or stations, and, more particularly, methods and apparatus useful in the management of remotely-deployed units or stations such as telephone stations for example.
The vast majority of telephone network systems currently in use employ a plurality of passive telephone stations that connect to a central network operations platform. The telephone stations in such network systems are often referred to as "dumb" telephones, insofar as such telephones traditionally are not equipped to independently monitor the revenue and/or costs associated with telephone calls placed from the station. Rather, all such monitoring occurs on the exchange level, independent of the telephone station itself.
However, certain systems have been developed to monitor telephone calls from the calling location, and to provide information at the calling location as to the cost of telephone calls placed from the location. Weinberger et al., U.S. Pat. No. 4,122,308, for example, discloses a telephone accessory device for monitoring the cost of a telephone call at the location of the calling telephone. The cost of each call is determined by address to a memory that contains billing rate information. At the conclusion of the telephone call, the device enters the total cost of the call into an accumulator which provides information as to the total month-to-date costs of calls placed from the telephone.
It is nevertheless highly desirable to more effectively manage remotely-deployed units such as telephone stations in an automated and/or real or near real-time fashion, including to minimize the delays and expenses associated with manual gathering and use of management data. Such management control over such stations may enable and include, for example, tracking of telephone station revenue and expenses to assess the profitability of telephone stations, reconciliation of billed charges associated with the telephone line, and/or reconciliation of commissions related to services associated with the telephone line.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide systems for more effective and comprehensive management of remotely-deployed, revenue-generating and/or cost-incurring units or stations, such as telephone stations for example, including methods and apparatus that provide for revenue and expense tracking, maintenance tracking, profitability assessment, billing reconciliation and/or commission reconciliation in an automated and/or real or near real-time manner. It thereby is an object of the present invention to reduce delays, effort and expenses heretofore incurred in managing such remote stations, and to in turn increase management efficiency. Other objects of the present invention will be apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art from the drawing and the following description.